


Walk the Same Woods

by AvaBlook (AvaTaggart), AvaTaggart



Category: Den Lille Pige med Svovlstikkerne | The Little Match Girl - Hans Christian Andersen, Gravity Falls, Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: Anxiety Disorder, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Multiple Crossovers, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 13:02:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6520807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaTaggart/pseuds/AvaBlook, https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaTaggart/pseuds/AvaTaggart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After he left the Unknown, Wirt was never the same, and it seems that the supernatural things that he found in the Unknown will never really leave his life - especially after his twin kids, Dipper and Mabel, seem to get tangled up in more of the same all on their own. Crossover between OTGW, the Gravity Falls Transcendence AU, and the Little Match Girl, which will all wind their way together eventually. Based on user RosalyndaBlack's au.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RosalyndaBlack](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosalyndaBlack/gifts).



When the brothers had made it out of the Unknown, Wirt had started going crazy. Or at least, that’s what his parents called it.

Honestly, you’d think nearly getting turned into a tree by a menacing shadow monster and watching your brother’s life almost end right in front of you would give you the right to be a little bit paranoid. So what if he found himself unable to sleep in the dark for fear the Beast would materialize from the blackness? So what if he couldn’t stand the sight of oak trees anymore because of how similar the leaves were to those on the Edelwood trees, or had a curious affinity for blue birds? He’d survived, and he was still here.

Their parents tried to get Greg to stop talking about it, shushing or interrupting him when he brought it up. They weren’t worried about Gregory being crazy – he wasn’t paranoid, he was still as happy as ever. They didn’t want him to turn out like Wirt had, or make his brother’s paranoia worse with his constant talk of monsters and beasts and lanterns.

Wirt started dating Sara. He really liked her, he did, and now he could see that she liked him too and had for a while, but he couldn’t help feeling that his paranoia was driving her away. He started trying to hide it, to hide the way he flinched at the feeling of bark against his skin, the way he couldn’t stand the shadows and the dark.

They broke up a year after they started dating.

“I feel like you’re not the same Wirt you used to be,” Sara said. “I get that the accident changed things for you, and I don’t know if I’m the right person for you anymore.”

(That was what they called the brothers’ trip to the Unknown: the accident--only acknowledging the side of things that they saw, the boys nearly drowning, not their journey in the Unknown.)

He understood. He knew he wasn’t the same person either.

He got better at hiding his paranoia over the years, until it surprised even him to see him react to the things he did. He finished high school, went to college. He got a degree in computer programming, planned to enter that ever-growing market and never have to deal with anything outdoors that would remind him of the Unknown ever ever again.

He met a girl his sophomore year. Her father had PTSD from fighting in some war; she was used to dealing with and loving people who were irreparably broken inside, who would always flinch at things others couldn’t understand. She understood when he didn’t want to go on walks in the park or to see scary movies. She took him to the beach and the amusement park and NASCAR races instead.

On the day they graduated, Wirt proposed to her. She said yes.

The two of them moved to Piedmont, California, where she’d grown up. They’d cut down the oak tree in the front yard as soon as they could, replaced all the trees on the property with a lovely flower garden. Wirt worked managing a computer system for a major company, sometimes driving into work, and on days he couldn’t manage that, working from home. His wife worked teaching elementary school.

They lived happily like this for a few years, and that’s when she told him.

She was pregnant, with twins.

Wirt hadn’t talked with his parents much, because of what they’d done to him, not believing him and treating him like he was crazy. Still, he told them, and they responded with the typical happiness, and apparently spread the word to the rest of the family, because the next thing Wirt knew, his Uncle Stan was calling him to chat. At first it was all about the babies—ultrasound had shown one boy and one girl—but it shifted away to other topics eventually; first just the normal stuff, how was life in Piedmont and his job and were he and his wife getting along, but then he asked about the Unknown. With those words, too, not calling it the accident like the rest of the family had.

Stan listened when Wirt told him about the Unknown. Stan listened when Wirt called him in a panic, freaking out because that tree he saw on his drive home had a face on it and oh god it was an Edelwood tree, it had to be. Stan didn’t brush off Wirt’s words like his parents had.

The two of them actually got close in the months leading up to the twins’ birth. After the rush to the hospital that led to Wirt and his wife welcoming the twins to the world a couple weeks early, Wirt even called Stan to let him know before his own parents, and Stan was there the next day to help.

Despite being born early, the twins were perfectly healthy, if entirely too small. The girl, Mabel, was the first to be born, and the larger of the two, while the boy, Stan, was smaller, with a curiously defined birthmark of the Big Dipper on his forehead.

“Maybe this can be a turning point,” Wirt’s wife said, the night the twins were born. “Maybe having the kids will help you deal with your anxiety,”

“Maybe,” Wirt said. He would be spending a lot of time with the kids, after all; after his wife had recovered enough to go back to work, she would, and Wirt would work from home from now on and look after the kids.

For once, everything played out as perfectly as Wirt had planned it. His wife went back to work and he became the main caretaker for the kids, and it did help somewhat, though mostly because when you’re keeping tabs on two wiggling, squirming babies twenty-four hours a day you don’t have time to notice the eerie shapes of the shadows outside your windows. It was a quiet, peaceful life, and there was nothing Wirt would have liked better.


	2. Chapter 2

The night air was bitterly cold against the little girl’s fingers; they were already numb from the biting wind, and she could only barely keep her grasp on her bundles of matches. It was New Year’s Eve, the dead of winter, but she couldn’t go back home without selling any of the matches that no one seemed to want to buy.

A blast of icy air cut through her cheek like a knife, numbing her skin, and she dropped her face to avoid getting snow blown into her eyes.

In her hands she held easily a hundred slim, cheap matches, bundled into groups with rubber bands to avoid losing any. It would be so easy to slip one out of its bundle, strike it and let it warm her for a moment at least.

With another blast of wind, she decided to do it. She slipped a match out of its bundle, scraped it down a rough brick wall, watched a small flame bloom to life.

She wrapped herself around it, both to absorb as much heat as she could and to shelter it from the wind. The little fire glowing at its tip was impossibly hot, a woodstove instead of a flicker of fire, but when she pulled it away to examine it the flame went out and she was left in the cold again.

Another match. Her whole body warmed, and she could smell potatoes and molasses and roast turkey—a feast. It materialized before her eyes—a warm room, a large table stocked with food. She reached forward to grab some, but the match went out and she found herself again in a wet, cold alley.

She didn’t hesitate to grab the next match, but what formed before her eyes was very different. A human figure took shape before her—her grandmother, the only person in her family who had truly loved her, would have done anything for her, before she had died at least.

The match in her hand flickered, and she took hold of the whole bundle and scraped it down the wall, dozens of matches catching fire, glowing and warming her to her core. Her grandmother solidified, and the girl rushed forward to hug her, dropping the bundle of matches but keeping hold of the single, still-lit one that had brought forth her grandmother. She closed her eyes and buried her head in her grandmother’s shoulder, waiting to feel the warmth of her grandmother’s arms wrapping around her, but instead her grandmother grew cold and rough beneath her fingers.

The little match girl pulled back only to find that she had been hugging a tree. But there were no trees near where she had been . . .

The girl took a better look at her surroundings. She was in an enormous forest, in what seemed to be the still-warm beginnings of autumn, leaves on the trees turning colors but not yet falling. There was no one here; not her grandmother, not _anyone_ but her.

Suddenly feeling very small and lonely, the match girl brought her arms up to hug herself, only to find she was still holding her match, still lit but flickering.

If the flame went out, would she be back in the alley again? Back in the cold?

She had to keep this flame burning.

There was an abundance of wood around, but the girl didn’t know how she could use any of it to keep the fire going without setting the whole forest alight. But there, behind the twisted remains of a tree stump, was something glistening in the setting sun.

The girl rushed over to find an oil lantern, lying on the ground. Most of the oil had tipped out, but a small amount remained nestled inside the lantern, with the tiniest hints of a flame flickering in the rapidly darkening twilight.

 _This has to work_ , the girl thought, and she thrust her match inside, lighting the oil and bringing it back to a healthy glow. She carefully tipped the lantern the right way up, trying not to spill any more of the oil, and closed the door that protected the flame from the wind.

With a steady light source, the little match girl set off to find a warm place to stay the night.

Behind her back, the shadows left by the lantern began to twist and converge, weaving into a vaguely human shape.


	3. Chapter 3

The twins were five and in an adventuring phase the first time Wirt took them to visit their Great Uncle Stan. His wife had stayed at home, so it was just Wirt, Stan, and the twins—Stan went by Dipper now, a nickname he’d gotten because of his birthmark, but Mabel was still Mabel. Stan was thrilled as could be; as much as he denied it, he loved those kids like they were his own, or his own grandkids at the very least. He entertained the kids for hours with card tricks and magic shows, and they walked through his ‘museum’ at least a dozen times, eating up the all-too-fake displays that Stan had made.

It was nice, Wirt thought, to be out of Piedmont for a while, even if the woods around the town did remind him of the Unknown more than the trees he’d seen anywhere else did. He’d shut the blinds and try not to look out the windows, focusing instead on the twins and Stan.

But the twins could only stay inside with the museum and Stan’s magic tricks for so long before they started getting antsy. They wanted to go outside, to explore the woods.

Stan seemed to read Wirt’s mind.

“You don’t have to go out there, kid,” he said to Wirt, quietly, as the twins were watching a movie. “I can take ‘em out for a couple hours tomorrow, run ‘em around and get ‘em all tired out and then bring ‘em back in.”

“Are you sure?” Wirt asked. “I mean, I’m their dad, I could . . .”

“Kid, I’m sure. I volunteered and everything! You don’t have to go out in those woods unless you really want to—I’ll take great care of the kids!”

So Wirt stayed inside and Stan took the kids outside with a ball he’d found in some corner of the gift shop, and watched as they ran about in the woods until the light got too eerie for him to look at the forest anymore. Then he shut the curtains and tried to focus on not hyperventilating.

_The kids were fine, they were with Stan, he wouldn’t let anything happen to them, and besides, it was just woods, not the Unknown, it was not the Unknown, the twins were safe._

He was just starting to calm down when the door to the Shack slammed open and Stan came storming inside.

Without the kids.

“How good are the twins at hide and seek?” Stan asked. Wirt found himself unable to answer, and Stan kept talking.

“I thought it’d be good, you know—they were getting tired of the other games, so I thought we’d play hide and seek and then come outside. They weren’t supposed to go that far into the forest, I showed them the edges of where they could go, there were boundaries, but I searched every inch of the part of the forest we were playing in top to bottom and—and I can’t find them.”

No, no, no. Not this. Not the twins. He’d trusted Stan, but now the twins had wandered off and—and . . .

He had to find them.

Wirt was out the door in an instant, heading for the forest where he’d last seen the kinds playing with Stan with a determination that Stan hadn’t seen in him before. Stan had to rush to keep up, and then show Wirt the boundaries of where they’d been playing, the places he’d already looked. Even then, Wirt went over every inch of the woods himself, all the while calling the twins’ names and telling them the game was over, that it wasn’t funny now.

The sun was beginning to set, Wirt realized. Orange was blossoming out of the setting sun, a dying flower spreading its petals for the first time.

Now was not the time for poetry, though. Now was the time for action.

“Do you have a flashlight?” Wirt asked Stan. “I’m going in after them.”

Stan did have a flashlight; he had several, in fact. He grabbed two from inside and gave one to Wirt, keeping the other for himself.

“I’m going in too,” he explained when Wirt gave him a questioning look. “It’s my fault they’re lost, so there’s no way in hell I’m not gonna at least try to find ‘em.”

Wirt smiled.

“We’ll cover more ground if we split up,” he said. “I’ll go this way, and you go that way.” Wirt pointed at the two major pathways through the forest that were anywhere near the kids had been playing. Stan nodded in assent.

But before the two split, Stan grabbed Wirt’s shoulder for a second.

“Good luck, kid,” he said.

Wirt steeled himself, switched on the flashlight, and started walking.

His desperation and worry for the kids had overridden his fear of the forest until now, but with the sun going down and throwing eerie shadows, with the small animals rustling through the leaves and no Dipper and no Mabel, and only the light from the flashlight making everything look like a horror movie, Wirt’s nerves were jumpy, and his heart and breathing were both fluttering like they were looking for a way out of his body.

Still, he had to look for the twins.

“Dipper?” he called. “Mabel?”

But there was no answer.

What if he was too late? What if he found them but it wasn’t enough and he wasn’t enough and it was like that time he’d found Greg snarled in Edelwood and dying?

_No no no no nononononononono_

He would **_NOT_** let that happen.

He just had to find them fast.

“Mabel!” he called “Dipper! This isn’t funny, the game is over! You need to come inside now! If you can hear me, you need to answer me!”

But again, there was no answer.

The woods were becoming thicker, more tangled, and the path narrower. What if Stan hadn’t found the kids, would never find them? What if he never found the kids? What would happen if no one ever found the kids, if they wound up at the bottom of a river like Wirt and Greg had before, with no one to save them?

_He wouldn’t let that happen._

“Mabel!”

_He wouldn’t let that happen._

“Dipper!”

_He wouldn’t—_

There was a root jutting out of the path. It caught Wirt’s ankle, and down he went, smashing the flashlight, hitting his head.

Everything went dark.


	4. Chapter 4

It took the little girl a few hours to find any type of building at all, but she didn’t mind too much. It was much warmer here than it was back home, a warm autumn with gentle winds instead of the harsh cold with biting gusts of frigid air.

Still, she was happy to see a building to spend the night in, even though it looked to be a farmhouse that was falling down, with gaps in the roof and everything.

Better than nothing, she supposed, and walked up to the door, pushing it open as she walked inside.

But the house wasn’t abandoned at all.

It seemed she’d walked in on a teenage girl and an enormous woman having tea together. The woman, whose head was easily several times the size of the girl’s body, turned to look at the newcomer.

“Are you lost, dearie?” she asked, her voice kind. The girl behind her looked up from the book she was reading and smiled softly.

“Yes,” the little girl said quietly, lowering her lantern. The woman looked at the lantern and sucked the back of her teeth, taking in a sudden gulp of air, but looked calm again in moments.

“Would you like to stay here for the night, child?” the woman asked.

“Yes,” the little girl replied. Now that she was standing still, her body could feel the strain from walking for so long, and her legs felt weak.

“Well, you’re welcome to stay,” the large woman said. She smiled.

“You may call me Auntie Whispers,” she said.

“And my name is Lorna,” said the teenage girl in a soft but kind voice.

“I’m Sofia,” the little girl said.

“Welcome to our home, Sofia,” Auntie Whispers said. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you want.”

“Thank you,” Sofia said, tears forming in her eyes. Finally, she had found people more than willing to keep her at home with them, even if it was in some strange place she’d found by magic.

The flame in the lantern flickered a little brighter.


	5. Chapter 5

They were the best hiders _ever_ , Mabel was sure by now. She and Dipper had been walking for a long, long time to find the perfect hiding spot, but it would be worth it when Grunkle Stan came to find them and walked right past them where they were hiding, the inside of a huge hollow tree with peeling bark. Mabel was giggling already just imagining it.

Dipper wasn’t so sure. Dipper had been complaining that Grunkle Stan had told them to stay closer, that there was a perfectly good hiding spot in the low branches of a pine tree they’d passed a while back, that they shouldn’t be out there, that he felt creepy, like someone was watching him.

Dipper just liked to complain a lot, Mabel thought. The woods seemed perfectly fine to her, at least at first.

Now that the sun was going down and the trees were casting creepy shadows like monster hands, Mabel wished she had listened to Dipper and just hid in the pine tree. After all, what if they were such good hiders that Grunkle Stan never found them, and they were out here all night? Or forever? That would be too scary, even for her, so she wished that Grunkle Stan would come quick.

Almost as soon as she thought that, Mabel heard a branch snapping, like someone had stepped on it. She turned to look out of a hole in the trunk of the tree they were in and saw a girl, maybe a year older than she was, standing at the edge of the clearing the fallen tree was in, wearing Pilgrim clothes and holding an old-looking lantern with a flame flickering inside.

Now that the clearing was all lit up by the lantern and the scary shadows were gone, Mabel _really_ didn’t want to have to stay here with the shadows again once the lantern girl left.

“Hey!” Mabel called out, trying to untangle herself and climb out of the log. The girl with the lantern turned to look at the fallen tree, where Mabel was twisting in the opening of the hollow trunk.

“Hello?” the girl said, sounding confused about what was happening. “Who are you?”

“I’m Mabel, and this is my brother Dipper!” Mabel said happily as she finally got out of the trunk, gesturing to Dipper, who was now quickly trying to climb out of the trunk now that it was okay with Mabel.

“Hi,” Dipper said softly.

“Hello,” the girl said again, a bit more confident this time.

“Hey, have you seen our Grunkle Stan?” Mabel asked, figuring maybe this girl could help them find him so the game of hide-and-seek could be over. “He’s really tall and really fat and he wears a red hat that’s like _whoosh_ ”—she traced the shape of Stan’s fez in the air above her head—“and he’s probably looking for us.”

“The hat’s a fez,” Dipper offered.

“Right, a fuzz,” Mabel said, and Dipper shook his head while the girl looked confused.

“I haven’t seen anyone like that,” she said. “But maybe my Auntie Whispers can help you—she helped me, after all.” She smiled. “I can take you to her house, if you want.”

Mabel looked back at the log she’d been hiding in a bit before, then back at the woods they’d walked in from. It had taken a while to walk this far, and Mabel _really_ didn’t want to have to walk that far through the woods in the dark. Besides, Auntie Whispers probably had a phone, and then they could call Dad and get him to come pick them up.

“Okay!” Mabel said. “C’mon Dipper, let’s go.” She grabbed his hand to pull him along.

Dipper started to protest, but Mabel gave him a look and he shut his mouth and just grumbled a little under his breath.

“Okay,” the girl said, smiling. “My name’s Sofia, and Auntie Whispers’ house is just a little walk this way.” She pointed in the opposite direction to the way the twins had come here with her non-lantern-holding hand.

“Let’s go then!” Mabel cried, bounding forward and grabbing Sofia’s free hand in hers, beginning to skip into the woods. Sofia seemed really surprised, and hurried to hold her lantern higher up so the kids could see where they were going.

* * *

In the clearing they’d just left, a few shadows coalesced into a tall, dark form that kept itself mostly behind a tree, where the light of the lantern didn’t touch it. Its form radiated intense displeasure as it looked over the fallen Edelwood tree where the children had been playing. It had been so close . . . if the blasted new lantern-bearer hadn’t come in and gotten them, there might have been two new Edelwood trees by morning.

No matter, the Beast thought, trying to brush off his failure. The new lantern-bearer was keeping his soul burning, albeit more weakly than he was used to, with only traces of Edelwood oil in with more readily available oils, and there was no knowing if she would or could have harvested the oil from the trees at all. After all, he hadn’t appeared to her yet, and she seemed to have her own reasons for keeping the lantern lit—for now, at least. Sooner or later, he’d have to have a talk with her, to make sure she did her job properly and kept the lantern lit with Edelwood oil, but that could wait until he’d built his strength a bit more. He was still weak from the previous lantern-bearer blowing the flame so low, after all. And there was plenty of time for him to mold the new lantern-bearer to his way.

The Beast began heading out into the woods, not following the girl, exactly, but not walking away from her either, and for the first time since his return, he began to sing.

“ _Come, wayward souls / who wander through the forest. There is a light / for the lost and the meek._ ”

It had happened again. With every previous lantern-bearer, the Beast’s singing voice had changed to mirror theirs. It had been favorable with the previous lantern-bearer, the Woodsman, whose deep voice had matched the Beast’s own closely. But this was a different voice, a high, clear, little girl’s voice, only a bit deeper than the new lantern-bearer’s. But it sounded a way the Beast’s voice hadn’t sounded in years.

 _Innocent_.

In a haunting, beautiful way, the Beast’s voice was irresistible, the kind of voice lost travelers would follow for miles, if only to save the little girl singing it from wherever she was surely lost.

If the Beast had a visible mouth, he would have smiled.

 _I can work with this_ , he thought, and he walked off, singing.

“ _Sorrow and fear are easily forgotten / when you submit to the soil of the earth._ ”


	6. Chapter 6

Wirt blinked his eyes open slowly, waiting for them to adjust to the sudden darkness. Then he realized he was planted facedown in the dirt.

He pushed himself up to a sitting position, wincing as the sudden movement set his head spinning.

He quickly spotted the flashlight Stan had lent him, the lens shattered and the whole thing cracked, but still reached for it and tried clicking it on and off a couple times to see if it would light up.

It didn’t.

Okay, he needed to calm down. He needed to think.

He worked to slow his breathing—panicking was what had caused him to trip and lose the flashlight in the first place, and he couldn’t afford to do that. Thankfully, he seemed relatively uninjured: no broken bones, no blood.

He could see a bit better now that his eyes had adjusted to the light of what looked to be a half-moon, and he could make out the outlines of the trees surrounding him.

He pushed himself to his feet, tucking the smashed flashlight into his pocket just in case it might come in useful later, and turned to continue down the path.

The path was gone.

Not a minute earlier, Wirt was sure there’d been a path leading into the woods, but now, there was only the leaf-strewn forest floor—no path, no trail. He turned to look behind him, and thankfully the path was still there behind him, but it faded out just behind where he was standing.

Wirt started to get a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Something was _off_ here, he could feel it, but he just didn’t know exactly what it was.

He looked up from the path, at the forest surrounding him, trying to see if there was a way to tell where Dipper and Mabel had gone. He _needed_ to find them and get them out of here, _now_. He could just _feel_ that he shouldn’t be here, that he had to leave. He didn’t want the twins out here. He needed to find them.

There wasn’t a path, exactly, but there were a few trails (if they could be called that) where the trees and plants didn’t seem to grow. Maybe the twins had followed one of those—though which one, Wirt had no idea.

_Ok, focus, calm down. You have to think, Wirt, you can’t afford to panic._

He took another look at the paths, and _there!_ Just at the edge of the path, nestled in fallen leaves, one of Mabel’s bracelets with the obnoxiously bright plastic beads. He knelt to scoop it up, and recognized it. She’d made this one a few months ago, too big for her wrist but not so big that she couldn’t get it to stay on some of the time. Thank God she’d refused to make it without those last two whale beads, because now it had slipped off and he’d be able to find her.

Wirt started down the trail, which wound its way through the woods in a lazy, meandering way. He would have cut through the woods to get there faster, but he was terrified of missing Mabel and Dipper on one of the path’s turns, so he resigned himself to walking as fast as he could without running out of breath, hoping he’d find them before they left the trail or something happened to them.

* * *

The trail ended in a clearing.

In the center of the clearing was a fallen tree, hollow in the middle.

And on one of the shards of wood jutting out of what had once been the base of the tree, another of Mabel’s bracelets dangled precariously.

Wirt rushed forward to grab it, then peered inside the tree, thinking she must have snagged it climbing into the tree to hide.

But the inside of the tree was empty.

Wirt sighed and backed up. There were no paths or trails other than the one he’d come here by connected to the clearing, no more dropped bracelets to clue him in on which way to go.

Something about the clearing was giving him an uneasy feeling—something other than just the fact that it seemed to be here that his children had disappeared without a trace.

And then a cloud passed from in front of the moon, and he saw it.

The horrible, twisted face, seemingly screaming in agony, that was a part of the tree—peeling bark forming a face, marking this as an Edelwood tree, the remains of some lost soul who’d died in the Unknown.

But—but this wasn’t the Unknown! It couldn’t be! This had to be just a bad dream, just something he’d wake up from in a moment, something he was dreaming while asleep on Stan’s couch, he’d jolt awake any minute now, and the twins would be right there—

The twins. If this was real, they were here too. They were in the Unknown!

Wirt noticed his heart pounding, and his breathing getting so rapid he wasn’t getting any oxygen, and he collapsed to the forest floor.

_Calm down! You have to calm down—have to be able to find them!_

As his stomach started to ache with worry, he began trying to get his thoughts in order, to calm down.

_The Beast is dead. The Beast won’t get them. The Beast won’t get me. They’ll be fine; we were, weren’t we? Adelaide is dead. They’ll find someone nice. They’ll find someone who’ll watch them. I just have to find that person, and I’ll find them._

Okay, he could do this. He had to do this.

Wirt stood up, his knees still shaking. There was no way around it—he’d have to go in further, to try and find Dipper and Mabel. This time, he’d leave a trail. The paths he’d followed here seemed to lead back to the woods of Gravity Falls (though how that worked, he had no clue), so from here on, if he left a trail, he should be able to bring the kids back when he found them.

What did he have to leave a trail with, though? He couldn’t use food, he had only a handful of keys, he didn’t have rope or anything else that would have made a perfect path.

His hands found the flashlight in his pocket, traced the edges of the crack running through it. Would that work?

He pulled out the flashlight. It was bright yellow plastic, cheap and brittle, and he was easily able to snap off small bits of plastic that were bright enough to stand out among the dead leaves, yet not appealing or flashy enough that they were likely to be taken. Yes, this would do perfectly.

He began walking into the woods in a direction that looked promising, about halfway between the path he’d taken into the clearing and the directly opposite side, and began walking, dropping a piece of the flashlight every ten feet or so, close enough that he could see the previous bit from where he dropped it.

He hoped this would work.

It _had_ to.


	7. Chapter 7

“Auntie Whispers, I’m home!” Sofia called as she pushed open the front door of the rundown house where she apparently lived. Dipper was hesitant to go into a place with peeling paint and gaps in the roof like this, but the wind was starting to get really cold, colder than summer should be. He wished he’s worn a coat or a vest or something, but for now it looked like the only way he’d get warm was to go with this strange girl.

Before she brought them in, though, Sofia huddled the twins together and began whispering.

“Auntie Whispers looks strange, but she’s very nice, so please don’t be alarmed when you see her. I know she’ll be able to help you.”

And then she was leading them through the door like she’d never said anything.

Dipper’s mind burned with questions – how weird did this Auntie Whispers look, exactly? In what way? Was she like a mummy, or like Mr. Stevens from down the road who’d lost a leg and all his hair from cancer?

But before he could do or say anything, Auntie Whispers descended the stairs from the attic, and Dipper could see why Sofia had warned them.

Auntie Whispers had an enormous, wrinkled head, with eyes easily the size of Dipper’s face, but the rest of her was normal-sized, if a bit fat beneath her flowing robes. Her hands, the only part of her visible aside from her face, were downright tiny.

“Who are they, my Sofia?” Auntie Whispers asked in a rasping voice, focusing her attention on the twins.

Despite his best intentions, Dipper found himself clutching at Mabel’s hand for comfort, and she gave his hand a comforting squeeze, but then pulled loose.

“I’m Mabel,” she said cheerfully, offering her hand for a handshake like she’d seen their Dad do a hundred times before. Dipper winced as Auntie Whispers took Mabel’s hand and shook it, but Mabel seemed unfazed.

“This is my brother Dipper,” Mabel continued. “He’s kinda shy. Anyway, we got lost in the woods and Sofia said you’d be able to help us. Can we call our Dad from your phone?”

She gave Auntie Whispers one of her famous charming grins, the kind that always made Dad give her another cookie or story even after mom said no.

“Phone?” Auntie Whispers asked. “I’m afraid I don’t have a phone, children.”

Mabel pouted and Dipper panicked. What kind of person didn’t have a phone?

“But if you would like to sleep here tonight, which you’re more than welcome to, then I’d certainly do my best to get you home first thing in the morning.”

“Okay!” Mabel responded cheerfully before Dipper could say anything, remind her of the times their parents and teachers had told them to not talk with, follow, or certainly go to the houses of strangers. He was about to pull her aside and mention all this, but then he heard a howling wind blow through the gaps in the attic, and figured sleeping here was better than sleeping outside. And this lady had another kid staying here, her niece, so she wouldn’t do anything bad, right? It was like staying with another person’s Grunkle Stan.

“Okay,” Dipper mumbled, and Auntie Whispers smiled kindly at him. For a woman with a scary face, she had a nice smile.

“Lorna?” Auntie Whispers called, and Dipper took a second to wonder who she was calling to before a pretty teenaged girl wearing clothes that looked like they should be in a pioneer museum stepped out from behind a door.

“Yes, Auntie Whispers?” the girl asked.

“My dear, some travelers are going to be staying the night,” Auntie Whispers said, gesturing to the twins. Mabel waved excitedly, and Dipper smiled a bit.

“I’m Mabel, and this is Dipper,” Mabel said, launching into her speech again. Dipper took a moment to stop listening and look around the room. A bright, warm fire burned in a fireplace, with more than a dozen candles melting wax and glowing elsewhere. The whole room was bright and cheery, if worn down.

Dipper’s gaze swept past a window with the curtains not closed all the way, and he froze. He could have sworn he saw a tall, big shadow moving in the woods outside, but when he blinked it was gone.

He quickly turned his attention to the center of the room, feeling prickles up his back like the thing from outside was watching him through the window. He’d just imagined it, though, right? He imagined lots of things that weren’t real back home, or at least that’s what his parents said every time he thought he saw something weird, like a fairy or a ghost.

He just had an overactive imagination, they said, even though when he tried to stop seeing the things he still couldn’t, not until he gave up on looking at the details of things altogether.

This was just something he was imagining, like always.

Right?


End file.
